And so it goes...

Life goes on... It has been two weeks since the scan, two weeks since everything came crashing down around me. The weekend was spent quietly at home trying to get our heads around what had happened. There was no point trying to find a reason ... it just simply was.... there were tears and conversations as we digested everything. We both seemed to be on much the same wavelength in terms of how we were dealing with it although the lions share of tears were mine... me and my leaky eyes!

Going to work on the Monday was hard... it was meant to be the day I could share our great news but instead I had to try and keep a grip on reality. I spent a great deal of the day gritting my teeth and trying to reign in my grief... At 3 in the afternoon I got called down to reception to pick up a delivery. Flowers from my Tommy.... it was the final straw for me for the day so I gave up and went home.

Tom didn't have any work on that day so was home when I arrived and was worried that sending the flowers had been the wrong thing to do... poor boy! I knew it was done with love because he was feeling helpless... he couldn't make me feel better any more than I could make him, and yet he still tried. I still had all the pregnancy hormones happening, I had "talked" to this child and started a connection, it was all so physical for me, whereas for Tom it was more conceptual (his words). We both had to find our own way to cope with this, and our experiences would both be quite different.

The following morning I got ready for work but I lost the plot as I was walking out the door... I couldn't do it, I couldn't face anyone, it was too hard.... I crawled back into bed. I didn't want to be anywhere for a while. After Tom left for work I pottered with my craft work... keeping my hands and head busy, but not too busy to think about what was happening. I knew that as much as I wanted to ignore the news, pretend it never happened... it had... and life will go on with or without me.

The next day I was back to work again and I had plenty to keep me occupied so I didn't have lots of time to dwell on things. I booked an appointment to see my GP as so far there was no sign of my body aborting the pregnancy. When I saw him on the Thursday he explained that we could continue to wait and see or I could see the hospital about having a D&C. I was feeling a lot stronger, ready to move on from this and get on with life. I was booked in for an assessment with the hospital the following day.

The assessment was pretty straight forward, lots of forms to fill in and an explanation of the procedure before checking when I could have it done. The soonest would be the following Monday.
Another weekend spent quietly around the house. Luckily, with the show coming up I have plenty to focus on with getting costumes organised... I don't think I've been quite this productive with my crafts in quite a long time!

Monday rolled around soon enough and we got to the hospital at 7am. I was called through to prep for theatre almost immediately. The staff were all marvellous, very sensitive. Tom was sent home and told he'd be called when I was ready to be released again. Once I was taken to pre-op he couldn't see me again until I was released so there was no point in him hanging around at the hospital. I kissed him good-bye and was led off to wait for theatre.

There's not really much more to tell. A wonderful nurse stroked my hand as they stuck all the monitors on. She was still stroking it as the anaesthetic started to work... I could feel my eyes getting heavy... the blood pulsing in my ears.... mmppphf....
"It's working"
"What's that love?"
"It's working... I'm going under...."
"No dear... it's worked... you're waking up... you're in recovery"

Lord... that was quick... I was still a bit disorientated and as I looked around the room the finality of the situation hit me... I wasn't pregnant any more. That was it... over. I could feel the sobs ready to burst out of my chest but managed to calm them with some deep breaths.... haaaaaaaaa.....

After that I had to wait around in recovery for a couple of hours to ensure I was in a fit state to leave. Tommy picked me up and looked after me for the rest of the day, fussing about like mother hen! I am a lucky gal!!

Since then life is returning to normal. I feel as though I'm past the worst of the grief, and I have plenty to be thankful for. It took me a while to actually hit 'publish' on that last post. I wasn't sure if it was the right thing to do. I had needed to write about it but it was very personal and I wasn't sure that I should share that with the rest of the world. Part of the devastation of finding out I was miscarrying is feeling so alone, disconnected and insignificant. A great deal of the healing for me is finding out that I am not. This is something that is apparently quite common. When we were given the bad news initially we were told as many as one in four pregnancies ends with miscarriage at varying stages. That was just a statistic to me to begin with... just a number, it didn't help. But as people have learnt about what happened to us I have had many of them reach out with a story about a friend, a relation, or themselves and how they had been through a similar experience, sometime multiple times.

It seems like a selfish thing to say but there is comfort in knowing you aren't alone in the experience, and I can draw strength from all those that have been before me. Maybe by publishing these couple of posts I can pass on some of that to someone else who may need it.

And so, life does go on.... and I look forward to every moment!